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Reinvent the University for the Whole Person

In our rapidly changing technological landscape, the old model of higher educations looks increasingly outmoded. Reform efforts often focus on making the system more efficient in order to churn out ever great numbers of graduates.

We believe that universities should think critically about how to harness new technology to better develop their students not just as future workers, but as future citizens, problem–solvers, and leaders. The roundtables in this series tackled questions at the heart of the evolution of higher education: How can we build on insights about learning and invent new ways to deliver and measure education that matters for a lifetime? How can we use new tools and approaches to carry out the mission of educating the whole person?

We partnered with Georgetown University to bring together 50 top innovators in six virtual roundtables to envision a university system that could best educate the whole person – worker, citizen, authentic human being.

Innovators

Recent Conversations

Universities cannot change overnight, but they do change—incrementally and systemically, almost always through a combination of top-down leadership and grassroots creativity by faculty and programs. Fundamental changes are coming to Higher Ed whether those working at universities like it or not, and much of the change is being driven by new technologies enabling online learning and real-time assessment.

Higher education policies have been driven by certain productivity principles in recent years: first, by accessibility, and more recently, graduation rates. Both are critical in terms of getting more people into, and out of, higher education. But what would education policies look like that were at least equally driven by the goal of educating the whole person?

Universities largely operate in the realm of the physical, even while the burgeoning learning ecosystem has been predominantly virtual. This roundtable moved beyond this binary way of thinking and considered how each side might inform the other, blending the best of the physical and virtual worlds in service of educating the whole person.

Climate change, the mother of all 21st-century challenges, could force a fundamental restructuring of America’s economy and society similar to other key moments in our history – and so call for a different kind of American citizen. What skill sets will enable today’s students to address crucial problems like climate change?